Read Claude Code History

Read Claude Code History

Read Claude Code evidence only. Do not resume the old process, edit its project, or turn a read request into a continuation task. When the user later asks to act, hand the verified evidence to daymade-claude-code:continue-claude-code-work.

Route by the requested result

The requested output wins over the background story. If the user asks for a chronological table of their raw inputs, return that table; do not replace it with a topic analysis because their motivation mentions an incident.

Evidence surface and completeness

By default, discover every active Claude config home and every archive registered in ~/.claude/history-sources.json. De-duplicate physical copies by Session ID and content identity, and use record timestamps rather than file mtime. A result scoped to one explicit --home is a diagnostic slice, not a completeness claim.

Treat Claude's record labels as storage metadata, not authorship proof. A top-level type: user record can contain a command envelope, hook boilerplate, a whole pasted document, agent-voiced text, or a system placeholder. Human text typed while the assistant was busy can live in attachment.queued_command.prompt with origin.kind: human; do not lose those corrections by reading only user records.

Read references/session_file_format.md when interpreting schemas, authorship, sidechains, attachment records, compaction, or file-history snapshots. Read references/hybrid_history_recall.md before building or repairing the optional BM25/vector index. Read references/workflow_examples.md for exact search, triage, and recovery examples. Read references/claude_session_format.md when you need the layout rather than the message schema — where sessions live on disk, how project paths are normalized into directory names, the sessions-index.json fields, and the compact_boundary markers that tell you a transcript was summarized rather than truncated.

Commands

Resolve every script relative to this SKILL.md; do not search the machine for a same-named helper or recreate a JSONL parser inline.

Recent inventory

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<skill-dir>/scripts/list_local_history.py \
  --source claude --cwd <workspace> --limit 20 --language zh

Expected output: a Claude section with explicit source diagnostics, Session ID, internal time range, project, title, and archive/subagent markers. Use --all-projects when the workspace is unknown.

Exact Session evidence

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<skill-dir>/scripts/read_claude_session.py --session <SESSION_ID>

# Add this only when the caller intentionally wants to restrict lookup to one workspace.
<skill-dir>/scripts/read_claude_session.py --session <SESSION_ID> --project <workspace>

Expected output: # Claude Code Session Evidence Briefing, session identity, compaction boundary, chronological user/assistant handoff, queued human prompts, end reason, unresolved calls, subagent state, files touched, memory, and current workspace state. The exact reader always parses every physical Session record, including records before compaction; --full only removes output character clipping. It checks active and registered-archive copies, accepts only identical or strict append-only supersets, and fails visibly on divergent copies, multiple Session identities, a missing record-level Session identity, malformed JSONL, or unreadable bytes. With an exact Session ID and no --project, it searches every project across the discovered active homes and registered archives; an explicit --project remains a strict scope. A filename alone never proves Session identity.

Full-event keyword search

Codex searches include native event_msg/item_completed command output as tool_result:CommandExecution. Stream output takes precedence over duplicate aggregate/formatted views. Matching item/call ID plus exact text deduplicates repeated results; equal output from different command IDs remains separate. User/assistant event mirrors continue to be excluded. Wrappers with unrelated IDs cannot be assumed to be mirrors merely because their text overlaps.

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<skill-dir>/scripts/analyze_sessions.py search \
  --all-projects --exclude-session <CURRENT_ID> \
  --from-date <YYYY-MM-DD> --to-date <YYYY-MM-DD> \
  '<keyword-1>' '<keyword-2>'

Search user/assistant messages, thinking, tool inputs/results, compact summaries, attachments, queues, and file snapshots. Exclude the current Session because the query itself is otherwise a guaranteed self-match. Agent prompts are excluded by default; add --include-agent-prompts only when the user explicitly wants them.

Human-input export

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<skill-dir>/scripts/extract_user_messages.py \
  <persistent-output-base> --days 7 --group-by session

This produces Markdown and HTML. It separates storage pollution from human prose and recovers queued prompts. Preserve timestamps, duplicates, and Session boundaries; do not add a second thematic classification unless asked.

Deleted-content recovery

Recovery writes files, so keep it separate from ordinary reading. First run the recovery report against the exact Session file, review every proposed destination, then write only after the user asked to recover content. Never restore directly over the current project tree.

Read-result contract

Every answer must state:

1. Sources read — active homes, registered archives, exact Session files.
2. Coverage — Session IDs and internal time window.
3. Result — raw chronology or matching evidence, in the requested format.
4. Gaps — unreadable files, missing parent/attachment bytes, excluded sidechains, or any scope that was not searched.

“Not found” means “not found in the stated coverage,” never “never happened.” Report it only with the label census attached: run the same term(s) through the full-label search and state how many hits each source label carried (message, thinking, tool_input:<name>, tool_result, attachment, summary) — a user/assistant-text-only search cannot support the sentence. If the census shows the term living under labels you excluded, the answer is “found under X”, not “not found”. Do not call a compact summary verbatim history; it is a continuation aid and must be checked against raw records and the current workspace for load-bearing claims.

Before writing any negative or absolute claim ("never said," "never appears," "could not have happened," "impossible to satisfy"), clear all three:

1. Every record type, not only user/assistant text. A grep for the literal string must also cover attachment (queued_command.prompt), tool_result, and thinking — a record's top-level type/isMeta alone does not prove or disprove human authorship. Classifying hits by type:user vs assistant while skipping attachment is exactly how a real mid-turn human command gets reported as never having been said.
2. The cheap next step before "unrecoverable." If the gap could close with a tool this Skill already documents — analyze_sessions.py search --all-projects, history_index.py recall, or re-reading a file you already have but only partially inspected — run it before writing "Gaps." A boundary you have not tested is not evidence of a boundary.
3. A contradicting firsthand account reopens the question; it does not lose to your reading. If the user states they did something and your evidence says otherwise, treat the conflict as a signal to redo (1) and (2), not as a result to defend.

If a tool result states it was truncated or paginated ("showing lines X-Y of Z... do not answer from this page alone"), that warning is binding: read the remainder before any conclusion that depends on it.

Guardrails

• Keep ordinary read modes read-only.
• Do not run claude --resume or claude --continue.
• Do not use file mtime as conversation chronology.
• Do not run an unbounded whole-history scan when an exact Session ID, date window, project, or existing hybrid index can answer the question. A multi-provider sweep is the expensive case, not the exempt one: run recall for the providers the index covers, then scan only what it does not. Check recall's coverage line before treating any of it as complete.
• Do not share raw history outside the local machine without explicit user approval; it can contain credentials and private business context.
• Do not report a search as complete after a timeout or malformed source.
• Do not assert a negative ("never said," "never appears," "impossible to satisfy") without clearing the checklist in Read-result contract.

Surface contract

First use in a session: run python3 scripts/surface_version.py once and note the 12-char fingerprint — the sha256 of this skill's scripts/**/*.py code surface. If it differs from the fingerprint you last saw for this skill, the code changed under you: re-read this SKILL.md and the references from disk before acting on in-context echoes of them. The fingerprint covers code only; documentation edits do not change it.

CC behavior claims

references/cc-behavior-claims.json is the per-release ledger of every "Claude Code behaves like X" assertion this skill depends on (Read row numbering, tool_use/tool_result ordering, AUQ answer shape, interrupt markers, plan bindings, sidechain semantics). python3 scripts/verify_cc_claims.py --fixtures is the CI gate — exit 1 means the implementation, a fixture, or the ledger broke a claimed shape. --corpus <dir> re-verifies the ledger against live transcripts: exit 2 means the schema drifted, which is a correctness task, not a test failure — update observed/last_verified/ evidence or fix the implementation, and name the drifted claim(s) in the CHANGELOG.

Router and legacy compatibility

daymade-claude-code:local-conversation-history is the cross-provider router. It sends Claude reads and every Kimi CLI request here, and does not replace this Skill's identity or evidence contract. New Codex requests route to daymade-claude-code:read-codex-history.

Kimi CLI is a live surface of this Skill, not a legacy one. It has no reader of its own, so the two commands in the task table above are the only way to reach it; a Kimi question answered from Claude data alone produces a false "never happened". Home resolution order is --kimi-home > KIMI_HOME > ~/.kimi-code.

When that default home does not exist, the store is not missing — it is somewhere else, and the tools say so. The Kimi desktop client bundles the CLI inside its own Electron runtime and keeps sessions under that runtime rather than in the home directory, so a machine with hundreds of real conversations answers the default path with nothing at all. The inventory prints the home it tried as a diagnostic line; read that line before reporting an empty Kimi result, because "no home found" and "no conversations" are different findings.

Locate the real home instead of guessing, in this order:

1. Ask the recall index, if one was ever built with Kimi in scope. scripts/history_index.py status prints scope.sources, and a provider: kimi entry there carries the absolute home it was indexed from. One command, no searching. It only answers after Kimi has been indexed once, so it is the fastest path on a configured machine and silent on a fresh one.
2. Read the desktop client's user-data directory off its running process. An Electron app carries --user-data-dir on its command line (ps ax | grep -i <client>). The bundled CLI is not directly beneath it: the home is <user-data-dir>/daimon-share/daimon/runtime/kimi-code/home. Note the final home segment — .../runtime/kimi-code is the CLI install and fails the step-4 test, while its home/ child is the store.
3. Follow a transcript record's meta.sourcePath. The client mirrors conversations to <user-data-dir>/daimon-share/daimon/agents/<agent>/memory/transcripts/days/<YYYY-MM-DD>/conv-*.jsonl, and each record's meta.sourcePath is the absolute wire path it came from, which contains the home. Do not look in kimi-agent/conversation-archive.json — that file holds titles and timestamps only, with no path of any kind.
4. Confirm before using it. A real Kimi home contains session_index.jsonl and a sessions/wd_<workspace>_<hash>/ tree; pass it as --kimi-home once both are present. This test is what tells the store apart from the CLI install directory one level up.

Two schema facts that decide whether a located store reads correctly. Newer builds drop id and cwd from each session's state.json and keep the working directory only in session_index.jsonl, so a session's project must come from that map rather than from its own state file. And the same sessions/ tree holds internal agent runs alongside real conversations, separated only by a directory prefix — title generation, vault maintenance, and skill summarization are machine chatter, not history, and on a real store they outnumbered the genuine conversations.

Three ways a correct Kimi command still returns a confidently wrong answer. Each was reproduced on a real store; none of them fails loudly, so check for them before reporting a Kimi result:

• The inventory scopes to the current directory by default. A Kimi session's project is its own workspace, which is almost never the directory you are running from, so the bare command returns 0 conversations on a correct home — with no diagnostic line, because the home was found and nothing errored. Add --all-projects for any question that is not explicitly about the current repository. This zero is the one most likely to be reported as "you have no Kimi conversations."
• --kimi widens a Claude search; it does not scope one. Unlike --source kimi, which selects Kimi alone, --kimi means also search Kimi: the run still sweeps every Claude source, and the Kimi verdict lands at the end of output that can run to tens of thousands of lines. There is no Kimi-only search mode. Read the Kimi section specifically, and never report the run's headline match count as a Kimi figure.
• The search path has no automated-session filter. The inventory excludes internal agent runs by default and reports the count; search does not, so ctitle- / dvlt- / sklsum- hits appear inline with real conversations and must be filtered by session-id prefix by hand.

Reading one located Kimi session has no bundled command. read_claude_session.py resolves Claude session files only and exits non-zero on a Kimi session ID. The Kimi surface is inventory plus keyword search; to show a conversation's contents, read the session's agents/<agent>/wire.jsonl directly and interpret it with the record types above. Say that this is a direct file read rather than presenting it as the same verified reconstruction the Claude reader produces.

The former claude-code-history-files-finder also exposed optional Codex and Kimi branches. Its original instructions are retained in references/legacy_cross_provider_workflow.md as a frozen snapshot for migration and regression evidence only — read it for what the old contract said, never as a description of what ships today.